Memories That Last a Lifetime

I remember my husband’s first deployment to Iraq like it was yesterday. It was something that I had always feared, but never realized that it would be harder to say goodbye than it would be to leave. Or at least that is what it seemed like. It was a horrible feeling sending the man I love off to a war zone. I had no idea how to act or what to say. Several days after that miserable late night at green ramp, I found myself feeling very ill and ended up in the emergency room due to dehydration. Little did I know that our lives would change in a huge way. The doctor informed me that I was pregnant. Honestly, I do not remember much after that for the next 24 hours or so. It all became such a huge blur. My husband had just left for what we thought was a yearlong deployment and we certainly had not planned on starting a family quite yet. It took me almost a week to figure out a way to tell him. I didn’t want to just blurt it out over the phone and I certainly did not want to just write it in a letter or an email. We had set a skype date up and planned to meet each other on the computer and my plan was to take a home pregnancy test just before then so I would have something to show him. This is not how I had planned on telling my husband that we were expecting, but when it is the only choice you have you have to use the resources available. I remember telling him that I had something to tell him, but I must have had a fearful look on my face because he immediately asked what was wrong. I finally announced that he was going to be a daddy. I’m pretty sure that 15 seconds of silence was the longest pause on the face of the planet. I wasn’t sure whether to expect him to be happy, upset, sad or angry. But he just yelled out, “I’m going to be a daddy!” to everyone that was in the Internet cafe where he was talking to me. Everyone cheered and I heard congratulations come from quite a few guys in the background. I held up the pregnancy test to show him and had tears streaming down my face. I was so relieved that I finally had told him and that I did not have to keep it a secret anymore. I certainly didn’t want the news getting to him before I could! It was a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life and that changed our family in a major way. Looking back, I don’t think I would change a single thing about how it happened. Except maybe my husband would have been home to pamper me while I was pregnant, but that is for my own selfish reasons. There have been several other deployments since then and our family has grown by two. The entire experience of being a military wife has shaped me into a stronger and independent woman. However, once I added mommy to that title I learned new meanings to those words and how they related to me.